Police are currently in a crisis as the amount of bad apples in the barrel are reaching critical mass while the infotech is documenting their actions global and instantly. The basic public trust in our current policing system is in crisis not just in large metropolitan areas, but also small towns where a culture of compliance has allowed a mole hill to mountain.
Here are a few humble suggestions from an armchair civicist.
1) Allows go to the documentation to find forgotten great ideas.
To begin with, let's go to the DoJ COPS Program page, as a starting point.
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/...
We want the current documentation per the DoJ, we need a starting point to fix this.
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/...
We definitely want Ethics & Integrity, because that is the root of the break down here. Excellent, Mediating Citizen Complaints Against Police Officers: A Guide For Police and Community Leaders!
Clicking said link will take us to a 3rd party site, thanks DoJ! Great IT work here. Anyhow,
Info Page:
http://ric-zai-inc.com/...
Actual PDF:
http://ric-zai-inc.com/...
There is our document per the DoJ on how to hand these situations, and it's from 2002.
Great. Except! Look at the authors!
Samuel Walker, this is the citizen we all want to discuss civil liberties and the realm of effective police keeping.
This name does ring a bell because in Austin we have what is called an Austin Police Monitor, an official Police Auditor's Office. This was Samuel Walker's idea. Luckily I am better than Samuel Walker's webmaster and found this 404 link:
CORE PRINCIPLES FOR AN EFFECTIVE POLICE AUDITOR’S OFFICE
Report of the
FIRST NATIONAL POLICE AUDITORS CONFERENCE Omaha, Nebraska
March 26-27, 2003
Prepared by Samuel Walker
Coordinator, Police Professionalism Initiative Department of Criminal Justice University of Nebraska at Omaha
http://samuelwalker.net/...
The police auditor has emerged as an alternative form of citizen oversight of the police. The distinguishing feature of police auditors is that they are not primarily responsible for investigating individual citizen complaints, as is the case with citizen review boards.
Instead, police auditors are responsible for monitoring/auditing the citizen complaint process. Most auditors also review aspects of police operations. Some police auditor offices do investigate individual complaints, however.
As official government agencies, auditors have access to internal police records. The scope of this access is generally spelled out by ordinance or administrative rule.
Police auditors are designed to enhance police accountability by making periodic public reports based on their monitoring/auditing activities. In this respect they contribute to greater openness with respect to police complaint procedures. These reports often include specific recommendations for change in either the complaint process or other aspects of police operations.
One of the most valuable features of police auditing is that as permanent government agencies they have the capacity to follow-up on previous reports and recommendations and monitor the implementation of change.
This, this times every police force in the country. The key here is that this office is an official government position with unfettered access to the police records and can report such activities that due harm to the public to the public.
Why are we not funding this in more cities?
The same issue is address by the Department of Justice expert in this area here:
http://www.texascivilrightsproject.org/...
Basically resistance by the very people that would be hindered by a nation-wide standard in police accountability. No longer will fiefdoms be able to shield bad apples giving the entire profession a bad name.
So step 1 would be for the Department of Justice, threw their COPS program put police auditor oversight of our police force backed by the full powers of the police auditor government office.
We do not need to pass laws and pull hair, this already an existing idea with existing standards that we should role out nation-wide to stomp out irregularities in police disciplining and ensure a quality-feed back loop that is enforceable with sanctions.
Again, a great idea that appears to be on the back burner. Some adult in the DoJ should also call Sam Walker to see if he has any updated ideas.
Since the DoJ is using a document from 2002....
2) National-Database of Police Disciplinary Action
As highlighted by the great information technology work over at the DoJ site, the government is great at using technology to listen to me trade recipes with my grandmother, but so great at doing basic common things.
Like keeping track of serial civil rights abusers who parade around in a police uniform. One major is issue is how some jerk seems to float from department to department causing the same issues everywhere with each city throwing its hand in the air in total bewilderment.
Usually costing the local taxpayers a fortune in the process. This needs to stop. Today.
If we put 1% the energy we put into our NSA Infrastructure into this project, we would have this puppy up and running by Monday. Never again would this rogues be able to jump towns or states to completely pull the same stunts again. Unless the department checked against the registry of Police Disciplinary Action and decided to give it a go anyway.
That should work out great for them in a civil court. Not to mention will be highlight and possibly sanctioned by a real police auditor government office.
Remember that quality feedback loop? Now we have two feeds that should really help right this ship and get the public and police force back on the same page.
3) Reform Police Academies
The unspoken elephant in this room is the gungho us v them mentality that is breed since the beginning in police academies across this country. They train men and women as if they were a go team kicking down doors in Tikrit. Then giving them the very weapons one would have need in Tikrit on our last adventure there.
Even with crime at a decades low, a mind set that the jungle is going to kill them and is full of dangerous and wild humans has lead them to a shoot first and ask names later situation. They even had to cancel the tv show COPS because police have become so gun ho.
I am not saying take it all the way back to Andy Griffin, but Rambo cannot continue. If need, the oversight of police auditor government offices should also cover police academies to ensure that proper training techniques are being used to produced police officers that will generate trust and goodwill in the community, while also protecting and serving them.
To sum up, using an existing apparatus already within the Department of Justice we could easily implement a nation-wide standard and network to control the quality and the discipline with our police forces.
And oh, number four?
4) Drug test every police officer, not for drugs, but steroids. I dare you.
A dare any state attorney general in this country to call for the drug testing of our police forces for the illicit use of steroids and other drugs.
Triple dog dare you. That is also the other unspoken elephant in this room.
Well that's all I got, thanks for reading.